WHERE WAS I? Huh? Wuh?? No pictures???
That's right! As per Gary's request, this is the first photo-free Where Was I. So...um...guess away. I recommend doing it 20 Questions style!
Oh...and if you happen to guess correctly within the first twenty guesses, you'll get a bonus point! Oh yes...life is good indeed.
Leave your guesses in the comments section.
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
Arts! Entertainment! Other! Since 2002!
Blog About Town
- David Marc Fischer
- New York, NY
BAT Planning
BAT Reference
BAT Links
- Gluten-Free NYC
- New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest Map
- bighappyfunhouse
- ALOTT5MA
- newyorkette
- Radosh.net
- caprice's glob
- Amazing Adventures of Bill
- EV Grieve
- Emdashes
- Debbie Glasserman Design
- Deborah Grumet
- Marianne R. Petit
- Trish Mash
- Addled Writer
- Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company
- Gallery of the Absurd
- Go Fug Yourself
- Worth1000 Picture of the Day
- Matt Mendelsohn
- your waitress
- Heading Home Again
- The Other Dave
- Stoneleafunfounddoor
- passive aggressive notes.com
- PostSecret
- WFMU
Posts
32 comments:
Sitting in your apartment?
No.
Manhattan?
inside or outside?
Manhattan? Yes!
Inside or outside? Yes! Okay...inside!
Below 42nd?
4. Yes.
Below 14th?
5. Yes.
Below Canal?
6. Yes.
West of Broadway?
7. No.
In Chinatown?
Okay, well since you won't respond to Chinatown, how about a sculpture garden in Chinatown??
8. Yes, kid...it's in Chinatown!
9. No. Not a sculpture garden in Chinatown.
can you buy food there?
Is it a restaurant?
Oh! Scottie! If I had seen your guess I would have waited for mine.
10. Um...I wasn't at a restaurant. It's possible that I could've bought food there, but I'm not sure. I'll only count this as one question.
can you play games there?
11. I could. To be frank, I'm not sure about the current situation.
Actually, for what I have in mind: I really doubt I can play games there now, but I did when I was there.
Is it that cool stall in the arcade on Mott street in Chinatown where you could watch a chicken play a tic-tac-toe?
Hmm. You were inside someplace in Chinatown. Were you in MoCA (Museum of Chinese in the Americas?)--perhaps they had an exhibit when you were there that allowed you to play a typical Chinese game?
I thought of that chicken, too!! Only then I thought it can't POSSIBLY still be going after all these years.
Nice try, Gary...sorry, Debbie...Scott, you seemed on the verge of another victory...but David takes the honors this week for guessing Chinatown's world famous tic-tac-toeing chicken! (I don't remember it being in a stall, but David got close enough--I had the ingenious Chinatown chicken in mind all along.)
For the first non-pictorial Where Was I? I racked my brain for something that I wouldn't be able to capture with a camera anyway. I eventually settled upon the celebrated chicken, which I faced in a series of tic-tac-toe games many years ago. The records of that epochal event may be lost to history, but I'm pretty sure we played to a draw each time.
From what I've read, the chicken isn't there anymore, but the memory lingers among those of us who dared to pit our tic-tac-toe skills against the Famous Downtown Fowl. One example is this page, which offers an image of the sign announcing the battling bird's presence at Chinatown Fair, the dingy Mott Street arcade where the star attractions were a dancing chicken and the tic-tac-toe playing chicken.
So what happened to this egghead hen, ending its long run of fowl play? I don't think it wound up in General Tic-Tac-Tso's Chicken. According to this article, Lily's liberation took place in the winter of 1998, when, due to the efforts of a polite poultry rights activist, she retired to Massachusetts. It was a major step forward in terms of fair play for fowl. One wonders, though, how she would have performed on Hollywood Squares or Tic-Tac-Dough.
Here's Gawker squawking about the chicken in 2005. I believe Calvin Trillin wrote about it in The New Yorker in the late 1990s, around the same time she quit the city for good.
Truly the stuff of legend!
Okay, at the risk of sounding like a sore loser, were any of us made aware that this WWI was a place that your mind had visited recently as opposed to your body?
No, no one had any tip-offs.
No silly! I didn't think anyone was tipped-off! I thought we ALL should have been tipped off.
But that would've been telling!
I did put some thought into it. Honestly, I think it worked out fine, though not perfectly if Debbie or anyone is unhappy about it.
Here's my thinking.
1. I definitely was at the tic-tac-toe playing chicken game, which was in NYC. It just happened to be farther in the past than anything else in wwi so far.
2. I had a feeling that many of the regulars were aware of the chicken game and could figure it out.
3. I encouraged everyone to play 20 Questions style. If anyone had asked such classics as "Animal, Vegetable or Mineral?" and "Bigger than a breadbox?" I would have answered accordingly. Same with "Does it still exist?"
4. If everyone had been stuck, I would have given more clues. But, together, the players pretty much zeroed in on it nice and fast.
5. As it was, I tried to word my answers to indicate that things were definitely in the past. That started to kick in around Question 10.
Looking at the results, I have to conclude that this wasn't too hard or deceptive a challenge, as David typed in his answer within a couple days. Other sessions have taken much longer. The possibility of the answer being the chicken came up within two days for at least two players that I know of--Debbie and David--and, to be honest, I was surprised that Scott, who really seemed to be onto it, didn't finesse it before David did. It's possible that everyone but David said to themselves, "The chicken! But naaaah...that was a long time ago...." but I have a feeling that situations like that have and/or will come up again, even with locations that are absolutely current. ("David in the Ladies Room at the Minskoff? Couldn't be!")
Remember, wwi hasn't been around long--so isn't it still okay for there to be twists and turns to keep it fresh and interesting and full of possibilities? This was only the first (and possibly the last?) verbal challenge.
Anyway, please do give me feedback about this and anything else, positive and negative.
Finally, I want to say that I continue to be impressed by everyone. So far there have been 31 of these challenge (did I count that right?)...and, together, you've nailed each one within a week. That's amazing, as far as I'm concerned.
I just hope it's pleasant for everyone, too. As I've told Debbie, the object isn't to put the players through hell. It's to present folks with a reasonable and entertaining challenge and, as a result, perhaps see NYC in a new way.
Wow! That's quite a response! Forget I ever said anything. It's all fun!
Post a Comment